On some of the more difficult stretches of the Ring of Kerry roads you come across a huge notice DANGER. It warns you to be careful of the upcoming bends and squiggles, and you might think it was because of cattle crossing or sheep or wandering goats. Not at all. It is to put you on your toes against being squashed by an oncoming bus. And even as this is written in the third wet week of May, the buses are out in marauding bands: French buses, German buses, Irish buses, and buses from God knows where. So you take to the woods for the greater part.
Lovely, ancient, almost primeval woods. In Eastern Poland there is a famous woodland where visitors are allowed entry only on the understanding that they never leave the paths, much less pluck a flower. If a tree falls, it is left lying and, eventually sinks back into the earth, enriching it again. So it seems in parts of these Kerry woods.
In the remains of the Bland properties around Parknasilla, for example, outside, that is, the strictly planted environs of the original castle, now only a sketchy ruin. Trees, we normally think of as reaching for the sky. Upwards, straight or moderately so. Here they often seem to conform more to the slope of the ground. Almost crawling up them like giant crabs. That is when they are old and sagging. And not just oaks, or those of them which reach out long arms. But birch, many of multiple trunks. And hollies. And others. Everywhere the older trees are covered in moss.
Moss so thick and rich that, thirty feet up a tree, there will be ferns growing out of it. And where a tree is blown over in a storm, it tends to be left thus, its roots like a little roof over a cave entrance, and, as long as there is penetration by some strands, it goes on growing. Holly, beech, birch, lime, ash, willow or what ever. And where there has been lopping, there is the tendency to let the cut wood, in its turn, decay to enrich the wood floor.
And the flowers: bluebells, violets and yellows and whites that you can't identify. Above all, that invasive rhododendron which may yet change, utterly the wood as we know it. Not so may birds. Or they keep out of the way. Thrushes, a few blackbirds, around a lot, robins in the hotel area; one heron plodding along; a rook or two, a whimbrel, someone said.
Hard to tell what the odour of the wood is: is it the moss? the composting whole, mixed with the nearby seaweed?